Overview

Nonprofit multi-family housing developers are concerned with more than just the bottom line when setting their budgets, they also have to ensure they’re able to provide quality homes at an affordable cost to their residents. Seeing an opportunity to streamline procurement services to benefit members, HPN Select was launched in December 2015 with $4.5 million in seed capital from HPN and 19 member organizations, who co-own and govern the enterprise.

Select’s mission is to provide competitively priced, high quality procurement solutions for HPN Members and their key associates in the affordable housing sector. Select focuses on delivering value-for-money contracts on a national, regional and local basis that achieve the right balance between price, quality, and service in order to give members greater financial capacity to fulfill their own mission related goals.

Strategy

As a strategic purchasing alliance, HPN Select’s expert team analyzes its members’ historic spend patterns to inform a comprehensive and customized procurement strategy, and provides contract and vendor management to enhance the benefit for the member.

Select creates value for members by leveraging the collective purchasing power of 200,000 units to negotiate competitive pricing on a broad array of products. As members’ needs evolve, product offerings and customer teams will be tailored to meet them.

Focusing on providing residents the additional benefit of green and sustainable home products and services

85% of the HPN member organizations surveyed last year reported they were involved in sustainability initiatives and have in-house resources dedicated to environmental practices. However, they also reported a number of challenges, including insufficient product expertise and knowledge in a rapidly changing marketplace, cost effectiveness and demonstrating a return on investment, obtaining financing and navigating legal and regulatory requirements, and providing the systems and motivation for line staff and managers to change their behavior.

As a result, HPN Select is launching a multi-tiered strategy that includes a strong focus on increasing access to green and healthy materials for members.

Residential and commercial buildings account for 39% of CO2 emissions in the United States.

Source: USGBC

By integrating energy efficient and non-toxic products and services at scale and delivering them with improved pricing, HPN can increase participation and collaboration for improved health outcomes for residents and the environment.

Results

By purchasing through Select contracts organizations can save 5%-30%, thereby significantly impacting the efficiency of their operation. Select provides practical and innovative solutions to its customers through: product R&D and standardization, a group bidding process, centralized billing and spend analysis, vendor collaboration on logistical solutions, and peer exchange among customers to improve execution and replicate best practices.

Impact

HPN Select serves a customer base, including HPN and NeighborWorks members, that own approximately 200,000 affordable apartments. It is now expanding its focus to a related group of mission aligned for-profit owners and management companies who have established relationships with our members and manage upwards to 200,000 apartments.